Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1887-05-28

OF the darkness and out from the straw
in the corner, coming toward you, and
as they come near you, your light goes
out. Strike another match. All! this
is a babe, not like those
BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN
presented in baptism. This little one
never smiled; it never will smile. A
flower flung on IN awfully barren
beach. Oh! Heavenly Shepherd, fold
that little one in Thy arms. Wrap
around you your shawl or your coat
tighter, for the cold wind sweeps
through.
Strike another match. All! is it pos
sible that that young woman's SCARED
and bruised face ever was looked into
by maternal tenderness? Uutter no
scorn. Utter no harsh words. No ray
of hope has dawned on that brow for a
many a year. No ray Of hope will
light has gone out. Do not strike an
other light. 1t would be a mockery to
kindle another light in such a place as
that. Pass out and pass down the
street. ssOur cities of Brooklyn and
New York and all great cities are full
of such homes, and the worst time the
third watch of the night.
Do you know it is this
THIRD WATCH
of the night that criminals do their
worst workp Ii is the criminals
watch.
At half-past s o'clock you will find
them in the drinking saloon, but toward
II o'clock they 60 to their garrets,
they get out their tools, then they
start on the streets. Watching on
either side for the police, they go to
their work Of darkness. This is a
burglar, and the false key will soon
touch the store lock. This is an in
cendiary, and before morning there
will be a light on the sky, and a cry of
Fire! fret This is an assassin, and
tomorrow morning there will be a
dead body in one of the vacant lots.
During the daytime these villains in
our cities lounge about, some asleep
and some awake. but when the third
watch of the night arrives, their eye
keen, their brain cool, their arm
strong, their foot fleet to fly or purusc,
they are ready.
Many OF these poor creatures were
brought up in that way. They were
born in a
THIEVES GARRET.
Their childish toy was a burglars
dark-lantern. The first thing they re-
member was their mother b~andaging
the brow of their father, struck by the
police club. They began by robbing
boys pockets, and nov they have
come to dig the underground passage
to the cellar of the bank, and are pre-
pairing to blast the gold vault.
just SO long as there are neglected
children of the street, just SO long we
will have these desperadoes. Some
one, wishing to make a good Christian
point and to quote a passage of Scrip
ture, expecting to get a Scriptural pas
sage in answer, said to one of these
poor lads, cast out and wretched
When your father and your mother
forsake you, who then will take you
upP" and the boy said 1.-The perlice,
the perlice!"
In the third watch of the night gam,
bling does its worst work. What
though the hours be slipping away, and
though the wife be waiting in
THE CHEERLEss HoMEp
Stir up the fire. Bring on more drinks.
Put up more stakes. That commercial
house that only a little while ago put on,
a sign of copartnership will this winter
be wrecked On a gamblers table.
There will be many a money-till tina,
will spring a leak. A member of con.
gress gainbled with a member-elect
and won one hundred and twenty thou
sand dollars. The old way of getting
a living is so slow. The old way OF
getting a fortune is SO stupid. Come,
let us toss up and see who shall get 1T.
And so the work goes on, from the
Wheeling wretches pitching pennies in
a rum-grocery up to the millionaire
gambler in the stock market.
In the third watch of the night, pass
down the streets of these cities, and
you hear the
CLICK OF THE DIES
and the sharp, keen stroke of the ball
on the billiard table. At these places
merchant princes dismount, and legis.
%lators, tired of making laws, take a
respite in breaking them. All classes
of people are robbed by this crime
the importer of foreign silks and the
dealer in Chatham street poc%ket-hand-
kerchiefs. The clerks Of the store take
a hand after the shutters are p~+ up,
and the officers of the court while
away their time while the jury is out.
In Baden-Baden, when that city was
the greatest of all gambling places on
earth, it was no unusual thing the next
morning, in the woods around about
the city, to find the suspended bodies
of suicides. Whatever be the splendor
of surroundings, there is no excuse
for this crime. The thunders of eter-
nal destruction roll in the deep rumble
of that gambling ten-pin alley, and as
men come out to join the long process
sion of sin, all the drums of death beat
the dead march of a thousand souls.
In n year, in the city of New
York, there Were 81, 200, 900 sacrificed
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